A Nederlander!

The early part of today was spent trying to figure out what I'm going to do for the next week. I have decided to go to Salta, Argentina which is in the northwest part of the country. Since the bus ride is about 21 hours, I'm going to stop in Cordoba which is about halfway for a day or so to see the sights. Should be a good time! But I needed to get the bus tickets, which was something all in itself. I talked to one of the hostel staff about how to purchase tickets, and because this entire city shuts down on Sunday (seriously, between the holiday on friday, everything being semi-closed on saturday and the full-on closed of today, I haven't really seen the city at its fullest yet) I had to go to the station itself to buy the tickets. I thought, based on the seemingly clear instructions from the hostel staff, that buying tickets would be easy. Why would I ever think such a thing.

First, I had actually had to find the bus terminal. Estación Retiro is one of the biggest stations I've ever seen. You think Tokyo Station or Penn Station is big. Come to Retiro and New York will feel like the suburbs. Picture Paris' du Nord station plus Yokohama station plus Daly City BART and you have an idea of the TRAIN part of the station. I'm just getting started. The bus network is bigger and more sophisticated in Argentina than the trains. I'll leave it at that. Once I found the bus terminal, I still actually had to buy the tickets. The hostel guy told me that the windows to buy tickets were organized by where you want to go. I thought, great. That's a really good idea. Little did I know that a) there are about 20 bus companies per region and b) no one bus company goes to Cordoba then Salta from Buenos Aires. After jumping back and forth between windows, I finally got a ticket from BA to Cordoba then one from Cordoba to Salta. Knock on wood it all goes to plan.

This afternoon was taken up by the extremely important event of the World Cup Final. After misreading the game time start, I rushed up to Palermo (a northern barrio) to find Van Koning, a dutch bar. I wound up showing up at the door at 3:30, the kick-off time. I should have known that there would be a line out the door. The bouncer (yes, a bouncer at 3:30 in the afternoon) wasn't letting anyone in. So I retreated down the block to a different spot which was full of both Spanish and Dutch fans (I felt a little safer rooting for the Spanish) with people spilling out onto the street to watch the game. There were no seats left, so I had the VIP seat of standing on the sidewalk. No prob. I'll trade discomfort for atmosphere any day. As I'm sure most or all of you know, it wasn't an incredibly exciting game (unless you were keeping a running tally of yellow cards, then you might as well not watch a soccer game ever again), but everyone was really into the game, which was great. After Spain converted in the 115th minute pretty much the entire street went quiet - as the final whistle blew I wandered down towards Van Koning to watch all the dejected Dutch fans silently file out. Viva España!

After, I wandered around looking for a dinner joint before heading back into the center of town. This being Sunday, pretty much everywhere was closed. I found a great looking place though and decided to have my first beef in Argentina. A group of Dutch fans at the table next to me saw me sitting by myself and asked if I wanted to join them. I thought 6 rowdy Dutch and Argentinian soccer fans would be much better company than a water glass, so I pulled up a chair. They were surprised when I said I was from the US - they thought I was Dutch and that was the reason why they invited me over. That's weird, I could have sworn it was for the magazine-cover good looks. Anyhow, I did wind up ordering beef, and that's exactly what I got. In the states, you might expect some sort of side, like potato, mini-salad, something. Nope. Just. Beef. Two slabs of beef on a plate. It was pretty funny. They pretty much charred the beef, probably beyond well done, as well - all in all a disappointing experience with Argentinian beef, but I'm sure there will be many more.

We had a great time. We pretended it was someone's birthday and got a free round of champagne plus cake that we all shared. Funny stuff. Afterwards we found ourselves back in Von Koning, having a drink and pizza for dessert. Several hours later, we left and headed home. Little did I know that the subway ends service at 10pm on Sundays (and I was about to say that it is better than Philly's SEPTA, which it pretty much is), and here I was walking out of Van Koning at a quarter to 11. Not to worry, there was apparently, according to the Argentinians in the group, a bus that could get me back to the Hostel. Awesome. As soon as we get to the bus stop the bus in question appears, and the shove me on it and tell me to look for the big obelisk. Great. Here I go. I could be off to Uruguay for all I know.

My support of Spain never made it into the conversation, otherwise I might have actually found myself in Uruguay. Or off of Cape Horn in a dinghy.